


It Takes Two to Make Three

by AnnCherie



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Does this even have plot?, M/M, Multi, no, this is honestly just fleshed out dialogue, with surprisingly no smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-07-30
Packaged: 2020-07-27 12:35:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20046130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnCherie/pseuds/AnnCherie
Summary: Kyle takes a bullet for Michael





	It Takes Two to Make Three

"GUERIN!" 

The yell is so sudden that it manages to do the impossible and tear Michael's eyes away from the cells echoing the screams of what had to have been his kind, only to still hear the gunshot late. He sees Valenti crumple in front of him and mentally throws the attacker so hard into the concrete wall that he hears multiple violent cracks. Rushing the few feet over to kneel over his former enemy whose blood is soaking more and more of his shirt, he can’t help but snap, “Valenti, you dumbass.”

“You’re welcome,” comes the dry response managed between groans of pain.

“Why the hell would you save me?” Michael grumbles, helping prop him up against the wall of a nearby cell. The blood from his shoulder is pooling so fast through his shirt that Michael is having a hard time putting pressure on the wound even with his powers.

“Doctor’s instinct.”

“Your instincts suck,” he replies unapologetically. “I’m not Max, I can’t heal you.”

Kyle only barely manages to open his squinted eyes enough to glare. “Won’t do it again.”

Maybe it’s out of habit, or more the worry that someone might actually die because of him, but he continues the banter in the hope that it will delay the body’s shock. “If you had let _ me _ get shot _ you _ could have been the doctor."

"Still regretting it." Kyle says, exhaling a large breath from pain. 

"You better be fine 'cause I'm not dealing with you being a martyr," Michael growls. "ALEX!"

As Michael goes to focus on the metal with his mind, Kyle shoves his arm away with his good hand. "Don't remove the bullet. This place isn't sterile and there's stuff I need for it in the car. Just keep applying pressure."

Listening to Kyle Valenti is the last thing Michael ever wants to do, but since the man is a doctor he decides to let him choose his own demise. Alex arrives in the few seconds that they go to bicker again, running down the stairs in a broken pattern to reach them. “Shit, Kyle!”

“I’m fine,” the doctor tries to say, again getting interrupted by Michael. “He’s dumb.”

Alex purses his lips at Michael, eyes following when he gestures over to the unconscious soldier against the wall. “He got shot instead of letting me handle things.”

“You saved Michael?” Alex asks Kyle, eyebrows raised in small surprise. There’s a kindness to his voice that Michael doesn’t like at all.

“Unfortunately,” Kyle replies, causing Alex to sigh and start to lift him up before they get in any more danger. They make it out barely, considering the weight of another man and Kyle’s disadvantage, and the car that Kyle had stowed supplies in became useful.

Alex is the one to take over, pulling bandages out of the briefcase quickly as he tells Michael to apply pressure around the wound. Kyle yells out even louder when Alex douses the wound in hydrogen peroxide and cleansing iodine, hissing as Alex inelegantly tries to stitch the hole closed with a not so thin plastic looking thread.

“Shouldn’t we take the bullet out?” Michael asks.

“No,” both Kyle and Alex answer together, which mildly grates on his nerves. He can’t say he likes that they have shared experience with this sort of thing and that he’s left out. Alex purses his lips as he creates a tourniquet so tight that Kyle all but screams again, but when the pain settles down to less than black-out-excruciating, Kyle gives Alex a brief grateful look. Clearly worried, Alex hovers over him and tightens his jaw as he says, “Don’t let your lung collapse, Valenti.”

Against his will Michael has a slight twinge of worry that quickly evaporates when Alex subconsciously holds on to Kyle’s arm and helps him into the back of the jeep, making it obvious that Michael is supposed to drive them and watch. Before he can stop himself, he slips and asks, “Tired of babying him?”

Sending Michael a warning look from the corner of his eye, Alex shortly tells him off. “He took a bullet for you.”

Michael can’t help but scoff, ignoring the fact that Valenti is groaning on and off from pain. “No, he took a bullet for me so he could impress you.”

“Seriously?” Kyle grunts angrily.

Michael can’t stop now that he’s started, too upset at everything Caulfield had stirred up and even more angry that Kyle is taking the little attention Michael gets from Alex away. “It’s not like you’re straight.”

“What?” Alex asks, looking back and forth between them with confusion.

Kyle looks pale and sweaty, but he still manages to roughly cough out angry words. “If I die having this conversation I’m going to haunt both of your asses.”

“Did you two..?” Alex asks, only to receive vehement and synchronized answers. “_ No _!”

“He stole one of my dates,” Kyle gets out, and Michael bites back, “People dig cowboys.”

“You mean the cowboy aesthetic?” the brunette scoffs. “Do you even own horses?”

Michael shakes his head, his defensive smirk lighting up his face as he turns smug and replies, “Too busy giving people rides of my own.”

Kyle groans in annoyance, but starts to slip more out of consciousness, and Michael hates that he’s worried about one of the people he’s hated most in Roswell. As Kyle’s eyes are closing and Alex is holding him close, Michael tries not to glare too fiercely or jostle the jeep on the dirt roads in anger. Alex looks up at him in the middle of his angst, giving him that familiar judgmental stare that kills him every time.

“Outing people because you're jealous isn't okay with me, Guerin,” Alex tells him firmly. “This whole time he’s been pushing me to tell you how I feel about you, trying to back you up. He took the bullet because he’s not the person he used to be.”

“Getting sweet on me, Manes?” Kyle asks, his eyes still closed, but as soon as the words make their way out he starts coughing, blood now on his lips signalling the type of internal bleeding that’s friends with death.

Alex looks at Michael wordlessly, and even though everything in him wants to just throw Valenti to the side of the road he knows that Alex would never look at him the same. To Alex, Kyle had now become more than an ex-best friend, he’d become the kind of partner worth battle, and after the Alex's time in Iraq he knew he couldn’t cross any line that would affect that. Resentfully, he drives to Max’s cabin faster than possible without alien powers, and by the time they reach the home Kyle is slipping.

“_ Max!” _ Michael pushes with his mind, and his quasi-siblings both rush out to greet them, as well as Liz, who has the most violent reaction as she leaps forward to them. “Kyle!” Searching both Alex and Michael with fierceness in her eyes, she demands, “What happened?!”

“He saved Michael,” Alex says quickly, but Liz is demanding her boyfriend, “Max, please. He’s saved your family.”

Max hesitates briefly, probably at the idea of using his powers again, but then he sees Liz’s face, and just like that his brother is healing Kyle the same way he had healed Liz. As Kyle coughs and shakes awake, Max angrily turns on Michael and Alex. “Want to explain what the hell happened?”

“Shadowy government conspiracy involving our alien families being held captive and tortured,” Michael spits at him, anger rising further and further at the memories. Max’s confusion and Isobel’s startled expression only piss him off more. “You heard me. Our family was still alive, and because _ you _ decided to keep us out of it we don't even know what happened.”

Isobel’s quivering lip does get to him as she asks, “What?”

Michael calms only slightly to explain, “There were more of us who survived. Not just Noah.”

“Okay,” she says, starting to find resolve that Michael feels slightly guilty for giving her when Max glares at him. “Okay, I’ll ask him.”

“Izzy--,” Max tries to argue, but she turns and firmly tells him, “It’s not your decision.”

As they leave to go inside the house, Michael hears Liz quietly ask Kyle if he’ll be okay only for Kyle to kindly tell her to worry about her own alien situation. Michael looks to Alex, who is watching Michael in return with either a loving look or a small sense of longing, but there’s a divide between them that doesn’t seem able to be crossed at the moment. Michael belongs taking care of his own world and lineage. Alex currently belongs learning about his.

* * *

When Alex and Kyle are driving back to the airstream so that now-healed-Kyle can pick up his SUV, Alex can’t help but flicker his attention back and forth at the doctor. Trying to figure out how to sew together the many variations of Kyle that he had known throughout the years was becoming more and more difficult. When Kyle finally decides to confront the constant staring, Alex interrupts him to head off anything awkward. “Thank you. For saving him.”

Kyle shrugs, looking away. “It’s nothing.”

“No, it isn’t.” Alex tells him. “I’ve seen a lot of men save themselves before others. You didn’t. That’s admirable.”

All Alex gets in return is a miniscule smile not even aimed at him. Kyle is seemingly meek, looking out the window with all of his boyish bravado gone. Carefully, Alex decides to take the conversation deeper, too sideswiped by the earlier information. “So I wasn’t crazy in middle school?”

Now Kyle looks at him, and there’s a combination of guilt in his eyes and the slightest bit of curiosity that Alex would even ask about teenage crushes. “No, of course not. I was just a coward.”

There was a lot more Alex wants to ask along that line of thinking, but Kyle adds, “That’s not why I protected Guerin.”

“I know,” Alex said slowly, noting that Kyle had said nothing about whether or not that crush had gone away. Michael was easily jealous, but he was also observant, and maybe Alex had let things slide when it came to compliments like ‘you’re the bravest person I know’. “Michael doesn’t trust people.”

“I don’t blame him,” Kyle responds, looking away again. "What did you find up there?" 

Alex sighs. "Torture. Research. Murder. You were right about your father. Killed by an alien because my father pushed him in the cell with a radioactive powered being."

Kyle is silent and still for what seems to be thirty minutes and Alex doesn't dare move or mention the fact that it’s getting dark, not when he feels so much misplaced guilt about something he couldn’t have even stopped. When the doctor gains his composure, Kyle looks over to Alex, dark brown eyes intense as he asks, “Are you going to tell him?”

“That our fathers are responsible for even worse than empty cells?” Alex asks with a deep scoff. “Not sure how I can. Not sure I can even face him. He’s-- he’s a firestorm of emotions and I don’t know if he could look past this.”

“I think you should give him the chance,” Kyle says. “It’s not your fault what your so called father’s done. If Guerin loves you, he’ll look past it.”

“And you’re going to look past your father’s murder at the hand of mine?” Alex asks him dubiously, unprepared for the small nod and gentle eyes. “Of course.”

“Of course?”

“Yes, Alex,” he says, looking a little surprised at himself for the slip of names. “Not much I could blame you for, Mr. War Hero.”

Alex ducks his head, trying to ignore the charge of intimacy in the moment caused by the rush of nostalgia and pre-teen feelings that he thought had deadened ages ago. Kyle Valenti was once his best friend, his first crush, then his nightmare. Now he’s his nightmare in an entirely different way. The last thing he needs is another man complicating his life, not when Michael Guerin is part of the equation.

Kyle clears his throat, maybe picking up on the ill-timed moment as well, giving a small smile as he unlocks the door and leaves, shouting back, “Talk to him!” and gets in his SUV.

* * *

Michael is busy watching over Isobel, who wasn’t technically fragile but still in need of emotional support after all that she had been through with Noah. They’re sitting at the diner where Liz is currently doing a shift, and when he hangs up the call he had been on with Alex, he throws his phone down on the table a little abruptly.

“Valenti can suck my--,” Michael angrily starts, only to get a raised eyebrow from Isobel. 

“I didn’t think he was your type, but by all means--,”

“Shut up,” Michael snaps back at her, mildly disgusted. He _ is _ disgusted, he tells himself, because he certainly considers the doctor the absolute last person in Roswell he’d hook up with. Well, maybe not last. There was some stiff redneck, racist, homophobic competition; but he was still very low on the list no matter how many abs the dude had. “You know damn well that’s not what I meant.”

“Hm,” she hums, a smirk playing on her lips. “Want to tell me that via mindscape?”

Giving her a severe glare, because there’s no way in hell he wanted to know what his subconscious might feel, he ignores her giggling and tries not to visibly pout. After Isobel had given him a long lecture on bisexual stereotypes she had read online he had tried to be less dramatic. It hadn’t worked. “He follows Alex around like a puppy and they’re constantly in their fucking club house talking about military agenda shit.”

“You don’t have to be jealous, Michael,” Isobel tells him with a sigh. “No alien powers are needed to tell he’s still in love with you.”

“Yeah, but just me?” he scoffs, unaware how much he’d been bottling up the emotion until it’s out in the air and Isobel is reaching for his hand. If it was anyone else he would have shoved them away, but he lets her intertwine their fingers like they were children again. Softly, she tells him, “You’re not going to find that out if you’re sitting here with me, are you? Go insert yourself and make them realize you’re not going anywhere just because they’re close again.”

“Are you going to be okay?”

“Of course.”

* * *

Not even a full two hours into Michael having joined both Alex and Valenti on their project of eradicating their fathers’ scientific horror research, Michael is jabbing at Kyle every opportunity he gets even though he can see it’s starting to wear on Alex’s patience. After a particularly nasty insult pointed at the dumb doctor that made even Alex angry, Kyle lost whatever calm he had been clenching onto.

“Fuck you, Guerin,” Kyle spat at him.

Michael gave his typical angry, smug grin. “In your dreams, Valenti.”

“You wish--,”

“Oh my _ god _ you two. Stop!” Alex yells, making both of them stand immediately still. There was something in the way that Alex never lost his cool that made it that much scarier, and Michael has some anxiety about the way Alex barks orders. “Get the hell out and do whatever the fuck you need to do to stop completely wasting our time and come back when we can actually _ work _.”

“What is _ that _ supposed to mean?” Michael asks at the implication.

“You heard me. Leave.”

Kyle’s already gone and out of the building by the time that Michael angrily storms out, but they aren’t far enough from each other not to continue their fight, and Kyle is the one who strikes first. “Ever consider leaving that temper back in high school? Or are we just going to keep repeating this whole thing?”

“Right, and I’m supposed to listen to you because you’re the patron saint of self-growth?” Michael scoffs.

“I’m not doing this.” Kyle huffs, hands in the air. “You can hang out with Alex all you want, he’s yours.”

Without necessarily knowing why he feels let down to the point he needs to continue antagonizing the doctor, he still prods. “Walking away just like that?”

“Why not?” Kyle responds, and the flash of asshole arrogance comes through for just a second as he gets his smug grin thrown back at him. “I know he’ll call me later.”

Michael punches him in the face, striking his lip in the small hope that he’ll knock out some perfect white teeth, but Kyle takes the punch well. They both were all too experienced in fist fights, but what Michael doesn’t expect is for Kyle to regain his balance, wipe his lip, and silently challenge Michael for another punch instead of immediately hitting in retaliation.

A second punch would have worked. Too predictable, though, and Michael hates being that. So he throws it all to hell and kisses the bastard, hoping that will be just as much of an insult, only to have the man kiss him back that much harder. They’re rough and angry with each other, using their hands to perform all the emotions they weren’t currently expressing with words or fists. Neck bites edge to breaking skin, pulled hair was enough to cause full groans, and there were several scratches in varying places before they were both getting hard.

Michael is the one to pull back first, lost in the thought of what to tell Alex, which seems to be the same thing Kyle must be thinking before he clears his throat, adjusts his pants, and goes back into the bunker without a word. Wasn't that supposed to be _ his _ reaction, not the preppy doctor’s? 

Alex barely looks over when Michael comes in behind Kyle, currently stationed at his computer and seemingly deep in work as he roughly asks them, "All good?" 

"Yeah," they loosely echo, and Kyle is a better liar than Michael previously gave him credit for, because he doesn't even look over at him once before going back to the research table, only noticing Alex's smirk creeping up his face when Alex speaks again. "Good."

Kyle gave him one unwavering look before looking both sheepish and offended. "You used the cameras, didn’t you?" 

_ Cameras _, Michael wonders in horrifying shock, as he guiltily whips around. "Alex--," 

But Alex is barely holding in laughter sitting down, almost bent over his desk. 

"Did you _ plan _ this?" Michael asks, not sure whether to be angry or go with Alex's good mood considering he _ had _ just made out with Valenti outside. Michael looks to Kyle, who simply looks more confused at Alex's laughter than anything else, although maybe ever so slightly pink with embarrassment. 

"No, of course not," Alex says slyly. "I can't predict what you two will do. That being said, your sister _ did _ mention--," 

Kyle turns to Michael then, eyebrows high and a grin not so slowly marking his face. "What did Isobel read in your mind that led to _ that _?"

'I’ll be back, I need to go commit a murder," Michael growls.

"No, hold on Guerin, didn't you say _ I _ wanted to fuck _ you _ in _ my _ dreams? 'Cause it kinda sounds now like you were projecting."

"Kyle," Alex warns, a smile still on his lips. "Let me talk to him."

The brunette laughs his way out of the bunker before Michael has a chance to project something very physical and heavy at his head, and then he's alone with Alex, unsure of how to feel. "Alex, you know it didn't mean--," 

"I know," he answers, getting up and walking over to him. His hands find Michael's and slowly tug as he looks down. "You both solve problems with sex. It was bound to happen."

"It was _ not _," he argues, but Alex only smirks. 

Michael frowns, but gets interrupted as Alex turns serious, eyes locking with intensity in a way that always messed him up. 

"Look. I am not good with words. I don't know if I ever will be after everything. But you should know I will always love you, no matter how much you drive me insane."

"And Valenti?" 

Alex doesn’t flinch, still searching Michael’s face for some sort of response before committing to any words. He still doesn’t know how the former soldier does it, no matter how quick at sarcasm and anger he had become, he still couldn’t help but show every emotion he had on his sleeves. "I'm not in love with him, if that's what you're asking."

"It's not what I'm asking," Michael says weakly, hating himself for it. "Is there anything?" 

"You're the one who kissed him minutes ago," Alex deflects, before relenting with a sigh when Michael starts what would be the beginning of an angry barrage of questions. "I don't know. You were my first actual love. Once upon a time long ago he was my first crush. Never thought that would matter again."

Thinking he’ll need to drink a few beers to remotely be in the headspace to process that, he shakes his head, exhales a long breath, and asks, “I can’t ask you to stop seeing him?”

“I don’t take orders anymore,” Alex replies with a warning tone. “He’s been vital to this mission with his father’s information and after everything he’s done I’m not going to cut him loose because it makes you uncomfortable.”

Michael groans, rolling his eyes at the ceiling. “Fine.”

“You two need to go finish somewhere, or can we finally get working?” Alex asks in response, eyes lighting up with the same mischievous humor that always accompanies his teasing. They only become brighter as Michael sends him a glare.


End file.
